Married...with a Mission

               

               I first heard our doorbell on the day we moved in.  One of the men who unloaded our belongings rang it while we stood in the chaos of our kitchen.  “Quaint,” he remarked as he came inside.  Its “ding-dong” is rather charming.  But the bell that rings simultaneously in the basement sounds more like a bug zapper on a July evening.

                When our doorbell rang at 2 AM several months ago, I was awake and breaking out in a cold sweat before the first “ding” reached “dong.”  I say the first “ding” because the doorbell didn’t stop ringing.  The upstairs bell continued “ding-donging” while the basement bell buzzed as if it was getting mobbed by a swarm of angry insects.  

                “B.J.!” I grabbed my husband’s arm.  “Someone’s at the door!”  His feet hit the floor at the same time as mine.  I snatched my bathrobe from the closet, hurried down the hall, and slammed into him as I rounded the corner, heading for the front door.  I cautiously opened it.  Nobody was on the front step.  I leaned out and peered down our quiet street.  Nothing.  I scurried back into the house and found my husband dismantling the upstairs door bell.  “Must be an electrical short,” he whispered.  The ringing upstairs suddenly stopped, and he headed downstairs.

                I followed him, still trembling, and attempted to make myself useful as he searched for the wires that connected the basement doorbell to the outside button.  I ran for a screwdriver, then parked on the basement floor and busied myself as moral supporter.  My relieved exclamations were punctuated with snickering: “What would I do if this happened when you were not here!  Honestly, B.J., what would I do?!”

                I still chuckle when I think back to that evening.  You see, the day before that happened, I’d been in a bad mood.  My husband had done something that had gotten on my nerves (I can’t remember what it was anymore), and I’d allowed that to feed all sorts of unsanctified thoughts.  “How is it even possible for us not to get on each other’s nerves? Seriously, we have got to be the two most incompatible people in the world…”

                 Gary Thomas, in his excellent book A Lifelong Love, addresses that self-centered, discontented perspective.  “Some couples face the listlessness of self-absorption by thinking that they married the wrong person.  If they had married someone else, perhaps the marriage would be more fulfilling.  But…it wasn’t about anything lacking in either one of them as people; it was about what they lacked as couple in the sense of purpose.”

God sent an electrical short and an incessantly ringing doorbell to remind me that when it comes to marriage, a shared purpose and a little humor go a long way. The bitterness that festered when I went to bed was vanquished in our frantic, mutual attempts to silence the doorbell before we had half a dozen startled children on our hands at 2 AM.  Furthermore, this little escapade served as a rather comical reminder of the reality that together we share a far greater purpose.  God made us one so that we could assist one another “in all things that belong to this life and a better.”  He blessed us with children, and with those children came the calling to raise them in the fear of His name.  That’s the mission we share as a married couple.  What a privilege!  And in the meantime we enrich our marriage as we set smaller mutual goals and work together to achieve them.

How’s your marriage?  Do you think you and your spouse lack compatibility?  Maybe it’s time you focus instead on a shared mission.

God Wrote a Book

A red plastic sign perches near the base of one of the locust trees in our backyard, right next to the boards that scale its trunk, steps to a partially-completed tree house above.  The sign reads, “A Loveland Library Super Reader Lives Here.”  Our kids read so many minutes in the month of June that the librarian offered us six such signs, one for each of them.  “Line them up in your front yard,” she urged with a perky smile.  I balked.  “One’s enough,” I insisted.  Nor did I object when Leah decided to stake the sign in the backyard.

My children don’t get their love of reading from a stranger.  When I was a child, my favorite part of summer wasn’t swimming or little league games.  Our family didn’t go on a lot of vacations, so they weren’t a regular highlight, either.  I didn’t most anticipate fishing or biking down our gravel road.  I certainly didn’t long for corn detasseling to begin, though I appreciated the paychecks.  My favorite thing about summer was all the time I had to read.  I’d curl up on the rust-colored couch in our cool, quiet living room and make my way through book after book.  My mom took my siblings and I to the library regularly, and we’d exit with dozens of books at a time.

Now my children follow in those footsteps.  I designate one hour every day as “Quiet Time.”  I use that time to refill my sanity reserves.  My kids spend that hour reading or being read to.  When I’m finished reading aloud to them, I try to read a little myself.  A chapter here.  Several minutes from an audio book there.  Slowly I’m whittling away at my self-assigned “Summer Reading List,” but compared to what I read as a child, I read little now.  Other responsibilities that a family of eight entails take precedence.

But there is a book that must have priority over every other activity and responsibility.  That books is the Bible.  God’s book.  But it seems that especially in the summer we’re tempted to brush over Bible reading.  To skip family devotions because we’re on vacation or because it’s time for swimming lessons or another ballgame. 

In an online video, Pastor John Piper exclaims, “God wrote a book.  That reality blows me away every time I stop to think about it.  Pages and pages of God.  His thoughts, his words, his heart.  Right there, just a few inches away.  I can carry it with me everywhere I go, read it whenever I want…”

That’s the book concerning which God commanded Joshua, “Thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success” (Joshua 1:8).  It’s the book that was written for our learning, “that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope” (Rom. 15:4)   It’s no ordinary book:  it’s living “and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart” (Heb. 4:12).  It’s the book that keeps us from sin (Psalm 119:11).  It’s the book that we must study in order to show ourselves “approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth” (Tim 2:15).  It’s the book that Job esteemed more than his necessary food (Job 23:12).  Why?  Because to know this book is to know God.  To know this book is to have eternal life (John 17:3).

God wrote a book.  Is it on your summer reading list?